


End Scene

by worldturtling



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Childbirth, Domestic, F/F, Femslash, Pregnant Sex, Sharing Clothes, Underwear Kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-10
Updated: 2014-06-10
Packaged: 2018-02-04 04:24:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1765372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/worldturtling/pseuds/worldturtling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anna escapes Angel reprogramming and doesn't bother to warn Dean. She just goes directly to the source. She tells Mary everything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	End Scene

**Author's Note:**

> Reapers are not and were never angels for the purpose of this fic.

In the end, Sam is the only liability.

In the end, it comes down to what John’s holding between his legs.

In the end, it’s about saving Mary  from everything  _they_  did to Anna.

Were doing to Anna. Or attempting to. Mind reprogramming is a long process.

It’s a last minute breakaway. She doesn’t bother with the present. The damage is wrought.

Seraphim manipulate lower orders for fun. It’s a sick and twisted micro-society full of creatures struggling to find meaning with apathetic leaders at the head.

Anna knows even as she coughs up blood in October 1978, that she would probably need to rip out her grace again very soon.

Another baby Anna will be born somewhere in a few years. Anna will want to meet her some day. But first she needs to save something more important than the world.

John Winchester dies in a car crash on Halloween. No angel can see it, not with the insignias she carved into the hood that morning, or branded him with when she passed him on the street as he was getting out of the auto shop (he bent over in pain for a brief moment and thought he was having a heart attack).

He didn’t deserve to have his memories and emotions wiped over and toyed with either, but Anna hopes his death will bring his soul peace.

She watches a several months pregnant Mary, hand over her mouth and another cradling her stomach, as she receives the news.

Anna doesn’t know how to undo the cherub spell, but she can try.

-

The funeral procession happens that Friday. Anna stands in the graveyard, just off to the side. The seven months pregnant woman glimpses her a few times. This is the first time she sees Anna.

Anna steps into the threshold of the house. This is the first time she’s been inside of it. She notes the salt line hidden carefully under the rug.

John’s relatives are here. His cousins, his marine friends, friends he would abandon and never contact again once Mary died.

A pastor stands in the corner, watching Anna. She thinks she sees a glimmer of something yellow, but before she can chase after it, a hand is on her elbow.

“You should not have interfered.” Anna looks and sees the visage of a young white woman with short cropped black hair and crystal blue eyes.

The choke on her elbow lets go, and Anna turns back to see the pastor, but he’s gone.

When she turns around, the woman is gone too.

She looks at the living room. Mary stands alone on the couch. Another woman tries to speak to her, but regardless of this, Mary is still alone.

Anna walks over to her, heels clicking on the wooden floorboards. The woman chattering quiets down as she approaches.

“Elizabeth, may I have a moment with  Mrs. Winchester?” Elizabeth Knowlen, 34, John’s second aunt, stands and leaves with some mumbled noises.

Mary is looking at her shoes.

“Those don’t look like anything I’ve seen in stores.” She says in a small, detached voice. She’s wearing an ill-fitting black cotton maternity dress, the kind a pregnant woman didn’t think she’d need to buy. Bought in a hurry.

“Maybe we go to different stores,” Anna says carefully, and leans to sit down next to the woman she widowed.

“I didn’t realize John had such a big family,” Mary says quietly. Her eyes keep down, looking at the floor, or at something beyond it.

“I’m just a family friend.”

“That’s nice.”

Mary leaves after another moment, without saying another word.

Anna takes the opportunity to carve angel insignias into the bathroom, the bedroom, and the nursery room doors. In small unnoticeable areas.

The cradle gets one too after a second thought.

She leaves. She walks to a coffee shop and looks at the black liquid stirring in her cup.

“That was a naughty thing you did.”

Sulfur fills her nose and her lungs, and she coughs before greeting the new presence.

“Leave Mary Winchester alone and you’ll live.”

“Is that a threat?”

“No, but it can be.” Anna, Annael, Seraphim of a higher order. The demon Azazael can sense some of this, perhaps, but not all of it. And he cannot taste the future she just sabotaged.

“I’m not scared of you.” The ageing optometrist with yellow eyes says.

Anna stares at him, grace overshadowing her pupils.

“Stay away from Mary Winchester,” white hot fire and grace etch through her throat, and yellow eyes flicker.

Silence passes, and the demon appraises her.

“I hate your kind. Pestilence.” Azazel says after a beat.

Anna drinks her coffee black, and the optometrist before her tries to remember how he came to sit by her.

-

Mary answers Anna’s knock at midnight. The light had been on. Anna wasn’t trying to appear normal.

Mary lets her in. She walks past the rug, and looks down at it with a frown, before walking past it. She sees Mary tense from the corner of her eye.

“You should have tried for the demon trap earlier today, that might have actually kept one of them out.” Anna says, turning around to face her.

“Who are you. I saw you sneaking around the nursery. Are you him? Were you sent by him?”

Anna debates a lot of answers and options. It would be easy to hide Mary right now. But then she’d be no better than the ones who had imprisoned her.

She lays her cards out.

“I’m an angel.”

“Bullshit,” Mary chokes a laugh, harsh words from such a small and pretty face. But her eyes are holding water, and her cheeks are pale.

“I’m here to protect you.”

“What, like some guardian angel?” Mary shakes her head with disbelief, a bitter laugh, and starts walking to the kitchen.

Anna follows.

“I know it’s a lot, but there’s more to this than you can possibly imagine.”

“My husband dies in a car crash on an empty street. He was hit by a truck from nowhere, which was apparently on the wrong route. The driver can’t even remember  _why_  he was on that road, but the authorities are putting it off to drugs anyway. So is that what a guardian angel does?”

Mary’s got her hand on a steak knife now.

“Is this even any use? Should I just take out the baby now? Christo.” She doesn’t look like she believed the demon calling would work. It was an apathetic attempt at best.

She’s hysterical. Anna swallows, tries to not remember her life in the metal ward.

“Mary, I’m so sorry,” she chokes out. Because beyond the part of her that burned with mission and need and intent, there was still the part of Annael that was human. The part that lost her parents, and her life, the part that wanted to rebel because she couldn’t stand the isolation.

And Mary’s eyes were wide and mouth red and sad.

“My whole dinner set is silver plated.” Mary says. Anna summons a knife from the boxed up silverware collection in the dining room. She cuts her palm.

“Not a shifter either.”

Mary is staring at the knife in Anna’s hand.

“How did that get there?” her voice is watery and shaking. Displays of power were stupid, and Anna hadn’t been thinking.

She puts the knife down on the table. Mary’s gaze follows it, and doesn’t look at Anna slowly approaching her.

“I promise I will tell you everything,” Anna says softly. Her palms gently cup Mary’s narrow shoulders. Mary’s eyes squeeze shut.

Anna’s hands slide down until one hand slips the knife out of Mary’s like butter.

She lays it in the sink. Mary’s shoulders start to shake. Her forehead plants into Anna’s shoulders. It’s a surprise. She feels a wet patch begin to grow in her jacket.

Mary sobs into her shoulder, everything shaking. Her fists ball into Anna’s jacket, and Anna gets the feeling she hasn’t been alone with anyone else since John’s accident. She hasn’t had the time to grieve.

Anna’s hands come around and she carefully strokes a hand down her back. Mary doesn’t seem to notice. She’s using Anna’s body like a tissue.

In the dark, in the kitchen, the grandfather clock beats.

Mary shifts below her. She’s stopped shaking. She’s stopped crying. Her face is just plastered to Anna’s coat like she’s afraid to look at anything.

Muffled, Anna only barely hears the dry words whispered from her mouth.

“I don’t even think I miss him.”

-

Anna takes her to bed. Mary just accepts the woman in her house, accepts the stress and the exhaustion and maybe she doesn’t care, because she falls asleep soon after her head hits the pillow.

Anna sees the empty space next to her, the pillow John had lay on hadn’t been touched. Anna brushes a hand over the indent his head made.  

With Mary dozing in exhaustion, Anna takes care to add more sigils to the house, hiding them even while she was unable to hide Mary herself at this moment. She would at least be protected under this roof.

Anna felt her own grace dampened by the effects of her sigils, and that’s how she knew it was working.

For good measure, she paints antidemon marks too.

-

Mary rouses at seven in the morning. Her bare feet pad into the kitchen, where Anna sat by a window.

She doesn’t look at Anna. She pours herself a glass of orange juice, takes out an aluminum foil wrapped leftover, and takes a seat at the head of her kitchen table.

-

Mary continues to ignore her as she straightens the house up from guests. She washes her sheets, dusts the living room, and puts away dishes.

Anna doesn’t move from her spot by the window. She spent thousands of years watching humanity, watching Mary Winchester for a few hours was nothing. Well, it wasn’t nothing.

Mary moved around as if caged. It was almost like she sensed everything Anna had put in her walls to protect her, but  because all these protections were tied to  a concrete structure, Mary’s home was effectively turning into a prison. Anna wasn’t sure what she’d do if Mary tried to leave the house but the problem hadn’t arose yet.

It was almost dinner time, and Mary shoved a casserole dish in the oven. She took out a plate, and then another. But hesitated, staring at the second plate like she didn’t know where it came from.

She doesn’t turn around to face her.

“Do angels eat?”

“I do.” Anna says.

Mary places two plates. One at  the head, another opposite.

“My name is Anna, by the way,” she says right before Mary takes her first bite of casserole. She pauses, doesn’t look up at her, but nods.

Anna eats with her in silence.

-

On the third day, Mary comes down the stairs in a blue dress, boots, and a brown leather purse. Her hair is pinned back into a curly bun, and a fresh coat of rosy lipstick coats her mouth.

Anna stops her before she walks out the door.

“Where are you going?”

“I need to do a grocery run.” Mary says, looking at her with confusion.

“I can’t let you do that.”

“Am I a prisoner now?” her tone has a sarcastic bite. Anna steels herself.

“I… need to put protective sigils on you or else my brothers and sisters will find you.” Anna had a very careful operation going on. Unless someone had specifically been stationed to watch the house, John was still invisible in his grave. His soul would get lost among the thousands in heaven. And by the time Anna was done with her personal mission, they’d never be able to find Mary again.

“By brothers and sisters, you mean other angels.” Mary assumes correctly.

“Yes.”

“You’re an angel who was sent here to protect me… from other angels.”

“I can… explain.” Anna says awkwardly. Mary goes over to her couch and sits, holding her pregnant stomach in a way Anna had noticed she does whenever she looks troubled.

“Explain, then.”

Anna swallows.

She walks over, and takes a seat next to Mary slowly. Mary’s glare is steely and Anna thinks she could have made a good cop.

She doesn’t know where to start, and she doesn’t know how Mary will take it.

“You didn’t really love John,” she starts. Mary visibly swallows, an unsettled look landing in her eyes, but she doesn’t move to speak, so Anna continues.

-

She wasn’t even sure what she could say.

Sorry the group I was part of brainwashed you and implanted a false feeling in you so you thought you were consenting to something you couldn't possibly consent to at the time.

Sorry the angels took away choices from you. They did that to me too. Sorry your family is dead because of how they orchestrated the son you're currently carrying  to do this to you.

Sorry I killed your husband even though you didn’t really love him. You didn’t know this yet, but you were meant to have a second child. Demons would use him. It’s better this way. Your husband turned your children into weapons.  He wouldn’t know this would be the furthest from what you wanted. He did it in your name.

In the future I come from, you die in five years.

The bathroom sink is running, the sounds of water splashing are muffled by the closed door.

The latch is unlocked. Mary steps out, bare feet again, pinned hair askew, face pale and eyes empty. She clutches something in her hand.

“I’d ask how can I trust you, but I don’t think there’s anyone I can trust anymore.” Her voice is hoarse, probably caused by her raw throat.

“I’m sorry,” Anna says. Because she is.

Mary shakes her head, maybe telling Anna those words mean nothing, or telling her something else. She walks to the kitchen and Anna follows, unsure. Mary drops something into the sink, and turns the garbage disposal on, watching the sink with vacant eyes. Anna sees a white band of skin where her wedding ring had been.

Mary looks up at her.

“So what was it you said about carving protection into my bones?”

-

After Anna assures her she would be careful not to hurt the baby, she places one outspread hand on Mary’s exposed chest, fingers laying against her collarbone.

Mary shuts her eyes and anticipates. Anna closes her own, feeling the warm skin underneath her hand, the steady heart beat. If she concentrates, she can sense the second heartbeat.

Hello, Dean, she thinks to him.

In a flash, she ingrains protective words onto her ribs, avoids the child.

Mary gasps, cool breath on Anna’s cheek, and a pained moan.

“It’s done.” Anna whispers after a second, her hand lingering to feel the heart beat flutter and calm.

Mary’s blue eyes open, and she stares into Anna like she’s just seen something new about her.

-

She asks if Anna would like to go with her to the store.

“In case I need a bodyguard. That’s what you are, right?” her tone is forced and light. But Anna nods, appreciates the gesture.

They take the impala, and Anna glimpses the back seat guiltily before getting into the passenger side.

“I wonder if I can sell this for something nicer,” Mary mutters, busying herself to get the car into gear. Anna silently agrees with her.

Mary introduces Anna as her distant cousin to everyone who wants to know about her new friend. They’re amiable to Anna, but eye her professional clothes, the pants, some even eye the boots.

“We’ll see if there’s anything in my closet that will help you blend in.” Mary says to her quietly.

-

At night, Anna hears Mary in the living room. The tv is on, so it’s really just below the noise on screen, but Anna sees her rubbing her stomach, head tilted down to her chest.

“I love you. I want you. I don’t care what she says, you’re mine. I’m sorry that you won’t get to have a little brother anymore. But you’re going to be with me and I’m never going to leave you alone. I promise.”

Anna swallows down a burning in her throat. She’d make sure Mary never left anyone alone.

-

“It’s getting cold.” Mary says a few nights later. They’d slipped into a cautious routine of pretending nothing was strange about Anna staying there. Mary seemed to almost believe her own story about Anna being a distant relative.

“Is something wrong with the heater?”

Mary stands before her in her long white nightgown, baby bump protruding significantly.

“Do angels sleep?” Mary asks casually.

Anna is beginning to get the picture.

Mary’s hand is only somewhat outstretched, but Anna’s folds over it.

“Are you going to watch over me while I sleep?”

“you don’t think that’s creepy?” Anna says into her hair. She’s on John’s side, but she notices no traces of John are in the room anymore.

“Maybe. I don’t like sleeping alone though.” Mary’s thin fingers, keep Anna’s hands in place over her stomach.

Mary’s hair smells like peach blossoms.

-

In the morning, Mary is awake before Anna. Anna sees her dressing, and acting as if nothing was unusual. Her body is awkwardly trying to fit a long white shirt over her body, but the sleeves are catching and her stomach is making it difficult to tug down.

Anna sleepily gets up and wordlessly helps tug her shirt down.

Mary’s breath hitches.

“You’re awake,” she says. It’s redundant. Anna doesn’t respond. Mary moves around to a dresser.

“Here are some old clothes of mine, they probably fit. They’ll help you blend in more.” She places some neatly folded shirts on top of the dresser. Anna looks to the left side, sees no dust anywhere on those sets of drawers.

“All of his drawers have been cleaned out.” Mary says to the unasked question.

-

“Either we need to move or I need to find a job.” Mary says to the stack of papers in front of her at the kitchen table.

Anna sits.

“You should move regardless,” Mary looks up at her suddenly, like she forgot about Anna while lost in bills.

“I’m sure you’d be safe up to the birth, but after that,” Anna’s eyes slide to the side.

“I’d have to redo the nursery,” Mary says, her voice watering up again. She sighs, shoulders hunching over, but nods. “Right, of course.” She clears her throat.

Anna sees her hand limply putting one of the papers down. She hesitantly folds her own hand over it. Mary’s mouth parts, but she turns and curls her hand back around Anna’s. Anna squeezes.

-

“You have so much red hair, Mary says, facing her while they lay in her bed that night. Her hand strokes idly down it, as if to prove her point. Anna can’t resist closing her eyes for a second, feeling Mary’s hand slow down, brush her hair down to her front. She fingers the same strand, and the back of her nails graze lightly against Anna’s cheek.

“I’m pregnant,” Mary whispers, her voice filling with uncertainty.

“I know.” Anna says, eyes closed.

“There are… urges.”

Anna’s stomach feels funny when Mary’s fingers linger near her cheek, get closer to her mouth.

Soft lips press against Anna’s. Anna meets them, opens up to them and lets Mary explore her carefully. She cups Mary’s face, fingers melting into her blonde waves. Caution turns to a motivated drive after that, fingers gripping Anna’s hair not harshly, but not gently either.

Mary pulls back, gasping for breath.

“I, I don’t…” her eyes are wide and wild.

Anna kisses her cheek.

“I’ll take care of you,” she says, grinning, warmth between her own legs making her giddy.

A smile blooms onto Mary’s face in response, her cheeks already flushed.

Mary’s mouth is quick to chase after another kiss. Anna shifts Mary’s night gown up her thigh, far enough for Anna to stroke her fingers against her underwear. Mary moans and rocks into her, bump knocking Anna pretty hard. Anna slides her hand into the waistband of her panties, feeling around and finding Mary pretty thoroughly aroused.

Something in Anna stirs in response.

She slides her fingers around, Mary losing control of the kiss when Anna slips one finger into her, and rubs her thumb over her clit. Her mouth is open and breathing against Anna, not quite in a kiss. She’s panting harder and harder, breaths coming in quicker and higher.

“There,” she pants, and Anna obeys, rubbing her in the same direction.

Mary bites her lip, rocks down and evidently comes with a suppressed groan.

Anna’s own arousal isn’t helped by that.

Mary’s hand is stroking down her flank. Anna was wearing her old pajama pants, and one of Mary’s old shirts to sleep. She bites her lip as Mary’s hand comes back up her thigh and feels down her ass. She leans over and presses her mouth to Anna’s hair.

“Go ahead,” Mary’s voice comes into her ear, and she kisses her lobe before retreating, kissing her cheek along the way in an echo of Anna’s gesture.

Anna slides her hand down her own panties, ones she hadn’t changed just yet but Mary was slowly winning her over. Her fingers are still wet from Mary, and she strokes herself in quick jerks. Mary’s mouth finds hers.

 Anna’s mouth doesn’t kiss back so much as pant openly into it, feel her orgasm climbing way too soon.

Mary feels around the back curve of her ass, hand dipping into the elastic to feel her outside her underwear, fingers pressing and grazing down between the crease.

Anna comes, and Mary’s mouth is smiling and enveloping Anna too.

In the end, Mary wins out and Anna is wearing her old underwear to bed the next night.

-

“So you can’t just wave a hand and make all of my belongings materialize into boxes?” Mary asks with a sigh. She’s eight months pregnant. Her hand is over her giant stomach and Anna feels a grimness.

“I need to conserve what grace I have in case we get visitors.”

Mary knows what she means, but shakes her head anyways.

“I can do most of the packing if you tell me what to do,” Anna offers. Mary catches her eyes and Anna blushes and amends, “I can lift heavy things too.”

“The realtor will be here in the afternoon, so if you can make sure the sink’s clean I can start on packing silverware.” Mary moves past her. Anna looks at the dishes that hadn’t been done , many leftovers thrown out but pans kept in tact, and smiles.

-

“This is my cousin, Anna Milton, her father’s with the church,” Mary grins at the realtor, presenting a smiling Anna to her questioning gaze, and then leading the curious lady into her home. Anna will have to work on making sure he demon traps and sigils are well covered before they leave.

Mary tells her this later that night when Anna is curled behind her in bed.

“And maybe you can go to the apartment and make sure we’re all protected too. Before we get there.”

“I can do that,” Anna says, palm cupping the side of where Mary’s firstborn lays.

She falls asleep listening to Mary’s breath grow steadier.

-

The apartment is in a different town. Anna uses her wings to fly over to it. It’s only a few hours away from Lawrence, but it’s enough.

It’s a quiet neighborhood, close to the downtown shopping center. If Mary can barter the trade for the van she has her eyes set on, (and Anna is sure she can), then they’d probably fit right in.

“Even for coming from such an arrogant species, the mere audacity to do what you have done is absurd.” She turns and regards the old man sitting at the cheap plastic dining table that came with the place.

She narrows her eyes. She can’t smell sulfur, she sees nothing unnatural beneath the visage, just an emptiness unnatural in itself.

She feels the decay around him.

“Death.”

“I won’t interrupt your ploy, you see, I don’t care nearly that much. But if you’re curious, those ones above on their high horses are beginning to sense something strange.”

“Are you going to tell them?” she asks, voice quiet. Panic lines her throat. He could kill her and it’d be for naught. He could turn her in. He could make it all undone. He could get to Mary.

He looks at her in silence.

“Please. Don’t.”

The wrinkles of his face twitch into a frown. A displeased gesture.

“I don’t care nearly that much. But it’s strange that you do.”

He’s gone then.

She continues in laying sigils with shaky hands.

-

She doesn’t tell Mary about the visit from an older than time presence. Instead she packs up what they can of the hippie van, (“ _That’s not its name_ ” Mary corrects her constantly), is the one who drives to Independence, Kansas.

The movers will have to take care of the other boxes and meet them there that night.

For what the house is selling for, they’d be fine for the next three months according to Mary. But Anna was secretly looking through job ads. This becomes a choice too.

It’s a cozy apartment. Two bedrooms, two bathrooms, a square kitchen that looked into a square living room.

Mary is in the first week of her ninth month. Anna unpacks everything while she rests on the couch, asking Mary what to do with certain items.

The important thing is getting the queen bed set up, and their clothes in order.

“It’s like buying a new home all over again,” Mary muses sadly.

Anna takes this opportunity to seek her mouth out in a kiss. They hadn’t done this outside of the bedroom yet, and so Mary is surprised by it too. But her hand grips Anna’s arm, and her mouth is a small smile when Anna draws back.

“You can make a home anywhere.”

-

January is freezing and the heating isn’t too great on the secnd floor. As a result, Mary walks around bundled up and ends up pressing against Anna’s back every so often when Anna’s at the stove.

“I can make it warmer for you,” Anna offers but Mary shakes her head, says no, and squeezes Anna’s middle.

Mary sits on the couch, holding Anna’s head to her stomach, and Anna kisses her stretch marks.

-

Dean’s birthing is complicated.

Mary’s water breaks while Anna drinks her coffee. She yells into their phone at her midwife, who can’t make it because Mary moved.

Anna has no knowledge of how to birth a child, even as Mary looks at her like she should. She may have seen births, but she never actively participated in one, not even her own.

She’s also pretty sure a place needs to be decontaminated before being used.

As a member of the 21st century she really starts to miss google right about now.

“We can’t afford a hospital,” Mary says quietly, face a worrying shade of gray. Even if they could, the idea made Anna on edge; too much of a chance to get caught.

She nods, even though she has no idea what she’s doing.

She wills into existence clean sheets used for this sort of occasion, the kind that you were meant to throw away after, and hopes that doesn’t attract too much attention.

Mary is panicking, and it makes her pain sharper. Anna can sense it in her eyes and the tightness of her brow and the way her hands are curling every time she whimpers through a contraction.

She also wills into existence a birthing stool. A majority of the homebirths she’d seen had used these. Mary stares at it like it’s alien.

“I’m not using that.”

“It’s,”

“-it looks like a toilet seat.” Mary cuts in. She may be panting in occasional awful pain, but apparently there’s still enough room for sarcasm in the situation.

“Okay, true.” Anna assents. It’s a wooden set up. There were probably more modern ones.

Anna ends up setting the sheets on the floor, and stacking pillows against the wall for Mary to lean against.

“I hate how this doesn’t feel like home,” she mutters. Anna kisses her flushed face, sweaty neck. She cries out again. Anna’s hand on the back of her spine eases the pain, but that’s all it does.

“I know you do. But it will, I promise.”

Mary chokes a sob.

“I think he’s coming.” Her voice sounds more pleading than certain.

“Okay, okay,” Anna soothes, goes between her legs and tries to make out the scene. She wishes she had studied biology and maybe tried to go to med school.

“This is ridiculous,” Anna looks up at the voice sharply.

The woman from John’s funeral, short black hair and sharp blue eyes.  

“You tried so hard to save her and you’re going to end up killing her the way you two are going about this.” She squats down next to Anna, looking between Mary’s legs.

Mary doesn’t seem to notice her.

“You’re a reaper.” Anna’s voice shakes. She should have realized it at the funeral.

“In about seven minutes, you’re going to tell her to push. Baby’s almost here.”

“How do you know…”

“Seen enough deaths just this way on the job. Might wanna sterilize some scissors too.”

“Who are you talking to?” Mary pants, sobbing through what’s probably another contraction.

“My name’s Tessa, by the way.” Tessa the reaper says casually.

“No one, sorry, uh” she feels panic and sees the way Mary’s clenching and unclenching in a variet of ways.

“Tell her to push now.”

“Push, honey.” Anna says, tries out a nickname for the first time in hopes that it might calm the situation down, not that anything about this situation feels like it should be calm. Mary’s eyes  are wildly confused at her but she screws them tight and does push.

An hour later, Tessa’s voice in her ear gone and bloody sheets with afterbirth spat onto them everywhere, Dean Winchester’s lungs squeeze their first cries into the air.

_Thank you, Tessa_

-

Anna comes home at the tail end of a long first week at her new job. The bookstore was great because it had long hours, just lost five workers to college, and because Anna was filling in for five workers it paid decent.

Mary cradles Dean, breastfeeding and resting him against a marginally smaller tummy.

“I want to change my last name.”

“To what, Milton?” Anna grins, heading into the kitchen. But Mary doesn’t doesn’t acknowledge that.

“Campbell,” she says with a smile, and brushes her mouth against Dean’s head. “Dean Campbell sounds good, too, don’t you think?”

-

Mary breathes easier after Dean hits the six month mark. They haven’t had any visits, from demons or otherwise. Anna is relieved about it too. It almost feels surreal, the way they’re getting away with everything.

“I should find work,” Mary says one night. She doesn’t sound sure, however. Anna’s palm grazes up her flattened stomach, her knuckles brush the underside of one of her breasts.

“You can stay with Dean as long as you want.” She kisses Mary’s neck, and Mary curls over and kisses her forehead.

“Get on your back,” she whispers into Anna’s ear, and Anna is quick to listen.

-

Anna comes home one day to find Mary nowhere in the apartment. Dean is missing too.

She feels a little lost.

She goes to start dinner, to find there is already a lasagna to heat in the fridge.

Mary comes in around seven, Dean in his baby carrier in tow.

“Working as lawyer’s secretary on weekends,” she kisses Anna, grinning.  “He doesn’t mind if Dean comes along but if Dean gets too rowdy I can leave him with you, right?” Anna looks down at the green eyed seven month old.

“I can take care of him either way,” she shrugs.

Mary kisses her. And then she’s walking down the hall.

They bought Anna her own pack of underwear a while ago, but Anna is beginning to miss the feel of Mary’s.

-

Sometimes, Anna catches Mary in the nursery, sewing wards into Dean’s stuffed animals, or salting his window.

She sings him to sleep every night with ‘Hey Jude’.

Anna is a fixture enabling these scenes to exist, but it doesn’t mean she’s apart of them. Sometimes, she still feels like she’s stationed to observe, like it’s just her default mode.

-

Michael shows up in her dreams.

“I can’t take a vessel to scold you because none currently exist to me,” Michael says in a chastising voice. However he looks like John did, the young one Anna only briefly met and touched and killed. “You’ve been a bad girl, Anna. “

She swallows roughly. She can’t speak, as if Michael has sewn her mouth shut.

“I can’t even see you right now, but I’ve sensed you around. I haven’t sensed her around, though. You’ve been very bad. We did find John, by the way.”

She glares.

“We’ll find you eventually, too. And with you, her. Then things will go back to how they were meant to be.”

Anna wakes up in a cold sweat. Mary rests peacefully beside her.

-

“You need me to  _what_?”

“Hold the vial while I cut my throat.”

Mary is still gaping, and looking at Anna like Anna was speaking another language.

“Michael can see me when I’m not in the house. Michael can see me. And as long as my grace is intact, I’m still tethered to them.  I need to take my grace out.”

“How do you know you’ll survive cutting your throat?”

“I don’t,” Anna said grimly. Mary gaped at her, but Anna’s face didn’t waver.

Mary’s nostrils flared.

“Fine but we’re not doing this in the kitchen, we’re doing it in the bathroom.”

Anna sighs and nods. Mary takes the angel blade from her hand. Mary could kill her with that if she wanted to, right now, Anna thinks with sudden amazement while she walks down the hall to their bathroom.

Mary closes the door behind them. She looks like she’s collecting herself, staring around before pointing at the toilet.

“Sit.”

Anna does so. Mary handles the angel blade, heavy in her hunter’s hand.

“How deep?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

Mary nods, bites her lip. Anna thinks she looks pretty from this angle too. Not a lot of people look good from below.

The cold tip cuts into the skin of her neck, and tears a small cut. It isn’t blood that comes out. Mary gasps.

Anna would scream, but her throat is blocked up by the causeway of grace spilling into a tiny vial marked to trap grace.

It’s fire and burning, and she chokes up. She blacks out when she thinks it’s done.

-

She wakes up in Mary’s bed.

“My girlfriend in high school, I mean” a pause, “very good friend, had red hair,” Mary says quietly, sitting up next to her. She’s brushing fingers through Anna’s hair. “Before my dad forced me to drop out, she was my only friend really. I mean I had a lot of boys after me but they didn’t really interest me for long. She did though. I didn’t think she’d care, if I told her what I did. She had her own family problems, she wanted to run away from them too. We both talked a lot about that, running away. Sometimes we talked about running away together. I never kissed her. But when I first saw you, I thought you were her. Just saw all that red hair.” Mary’s laugh sounds watery.

Anna blinks her eyes more, sees Mary with clearer vision. She swallows and feels a bandage around her throat.

“You never asked me why I trusted you. I mean, why I went along with everything.” She looks down at Anna, her eyes look distant. “I trusted you because I didn’t. I trusted you because I didn’t love you.”

It shouldn’t feel like the small blow that it does. Anna wants to frown at her, but she doesn’t think she can move her face yet. She feels like her mouth has been sewn up again, and she’s slowly reawakening all her muscles.

“What I felt for John, it was overwhelming. Every time I breathed, I was happy about him. I never felt that about you. About anyone else either. So I thought, as long as I was wary of you, at least no one was brainwashing me.

“But I love Dean so much. I was so scared that someone was making that happen. With John, it was something wrong under everything. But I couldn’t sense anything strange about my feelings for Dean. And when I started to love Dean so much, without worrying, I looked at you. I loved you a little bit too. You killed my husband, and took away a son I’ll never get to have. But you’re not an angel anymore, and I still feel that way.”

Anna’s eyes began to water.

“And you need to leave soon, don’t you.”

-

Anna knows pockets of the world that would open up to her if she said the right words. But instead she kisses Mary goodbye for a long time, takes some cash, and decides to visit herself.  With her grace around her neck, she heads to the space where she’ll fall some time soon. She’ll make sure the right family finds her.

Death appears next to her on the greyhound. It’s late at night, and everyone seems to be asleep if not lost in the window view. Anna is one of those people. She doesn’t stir until the man next to her says her name.

“Hello, Anna.” She jumps and sees the old man in the long black coat. He has a steaming pizza on his pulldown food tray.

“I hope Dean is of less trouble to me now in the future.”

“Is my family going to find them?”

“It would appear not, though the consequences of your scheming have not fully laid themselves out yet. I cannot predict them even if I cared to.”

He cuts into his pizza with silverware that materializes as he uses them.

“However, Michael does seem very angered. I’m only here to tell you to not interfere again.”

Anna nods.

“As long as they stay safe, I won’t do anymore.”

“Good to hear it.” Death says. He continues to eat his pizza. After a while of waiting for him to speak again, Anna turns to look at the black landscape changing into nothing.

Her mission was over. She accepts fading back into the scenery.


End file.
